Frank commentary from a retired call girl

Traffic Jam

When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. We merely prevent its leaking out at a certain point, with the likely result that it will leak out at some other point. – Eric Hoffer

How well do you remember the “Satanic Panic” of the ‘80s and ‘90s? Do you remember when you first heard about it, and what your reactions were? Do you remember how widespread and exaggerated the claims were, and how seriously everyone took them? The reactions from believers when skeptics pointed out the tremendous absurdities? The decline and fall of the hysteria? I sure do, and if you do as well you’ve probably noticed the strong resemblance of “trafficking” hysteria to its older sibling. Both revolve around gigantic international conspiracies which supposedly abduct children into a netherworld of sexual abuse; both are conflated with adult sex work, especially prostitution and porn; both make fantastic claims of vast numbers which are not remotely substantiated by anything like actual figures from “law enforcement” agencies or any other investigative body; both rely on circular logic, claiming the lack of evidence as “proof” of the size of the conspiracy and the lengths to which its participants will go to “hide” their nefarious doings; both encourage paranoia and foment distrust of strangers, especially male strangers; etc, etc, etc.

I first became aware of the panic through the medium of the McMartin Preschool witch trial, in which six women and one man were charged with sexually abusing children as part of Satanic rituals. Though the case first began in September of 1983, it was not until the bizarre allegations started to be publicized a few months later that I realized I was reading about something very strange. The fantastic, dreamlike quality of the “testimony” extracted by fanatics from the children (including claims of flying people, hidden tunnels, being flushed down toilets into secret chambers, and genital and anal mutilations that magically healed by the end of the afternoon) so reminded me of the “confessions” extracted via torture from women accused of witchcraft that I instantly recognized them as essentially the same phenomenon. Unfortunately, very few others did; though I moved in a hardheaded circle which soundly rejected the rapidly-spreading claims of widespread Satanic cultism, my students were shocked when I lampooned the sensationalistic reports of a local TV newscaster in the autumn of 1986. It wasn’t until the following year that a few skeptical journalists began to question the most farfetched aspects of the panic, and another five years after that before the public was done scaring itself into a frenzy; the fad dropped off quickly after 1992, and in 1995 a highly-rated TV movie depicted the McMartin Trial as the hysterical witch-hunt it was.

It’s not possible to directly map one moral panic onto another; the interplay of events and social trends is far too complex for that. There are a few obvious differences between the Satanic Panic and sex trafficking hysteria, the three most important being:

A) The Satanic Panic had a very specific focus, so it wasn’t as easy to force unrelated events into the model as it is to force consensual migration and sex work into the “trafficking” model.

B) The Satanic Panic was driven by a relatively small number of therapists, authors and cops out to make a profit and a name for themselves, with the support of religious fundamentalists; sex trafficking hysteria is driven by a very large number of NGOs, religious fundamentalists, neofeminists, cops and wealthy prohibitionists out to make a profit and a name for themselves and to advance a busybody agenda.

C) Most people probably find criminal conspiracies more believable than devil cults, so sex trafficking hysteria has an innate feel of verisimilitude that the Satanic Panic lacked.

However, it is the nature of moral panics, no matter what their subject, to die off in roughly the time it takes a generation to come of age, about twenty years; as I pointed out in “Crystal Ball”, even local witch panics of the 15th-18th centuries fell inside this time limit, and there’s no reason to suspect this one will be any different. The hysteria began in earnest in January of 2004, and with the exception of sex work writers, skeptics and experts in migration went largely unquestioned in the media until 2007, when isolated criticisms started popping up in the Washington Post, the Guardian and other large newspapers. Then in the last few months, we’ve started to see the skepticism spreading even more widely, with a number of prominent “trafficking” hysteria profiteers such as Nicholas Kristof, Somaly Mam and The Grey Man caught in outrageous lies. All things being equal I’d say we were on track for a TV movie about the trafficking hysteria by the beginning of 2016, but given the big-money interests who will work very hard to extend the panic past the end of its natural life, I prefer to err on the side of caution and keep to my original estimate of panic’s end by 2017 and critical docudramas by 2019.

Once one is able to examine the hysteria from an historical and sociological perspective, it becomes rather fascinating (though none the less frightening for those of us whose profession is being targeted by the witch hunters). For example, one can see how events that would have been interpreted one way 15 years ago are now seen through the lens of “human trafficking”; this recent trial in which members of a Somali gang were convicted for forcing young female members into prostitution would have been reported as a “gang-related violence” story in the late ‘90s, but is now labeled a “sex trafficking case”. In the ‘80s, every city in America imagined itself overrun with Satanic cultists; now it’s “human traffickers”, and there’s a creepy competition for the title of “leading hub for sex trafficking”, generally on the basis of how many interstate highways pass through or near the city (since none of them have any actual statistics to support their claims). In the past year I’ve heard New York, Dallas, Miami, Portland, Atlanta and Sacramento vying for this dubious distinction, and now Tulsa, Oklahoma is as well.

But the most fascinating specimen of this mass psychosis I’ve seen lately was the one which inspired this column; playwright Simon Stephens, whose expertise on prostitution and migration consists of “The one statistical piece of information I remember was from the chief prosecutor in Talinn, who said that 20 girls were trafficked from Estonia in a three-month period.” Armed with this mountain of data he wrote a play about “sex trafficking” named Three Kingdoms, and considers himself such an expert that he felt comfortable criticizing Dr. Brooke Magnanti for stating in her new book The Sex Myth that the extent of “trafficking” has been grossly exaggerated: “…it doesn’t matter whether 50 girls are trafficked every week, or 50 a year…If it’s just fucking one, that’s ghastly enough.” Obviously, inserting an expletive somehow turns “If it saves only ONE child!!!!” into insightful analysis. He also had words for those who rightfully recognize that the topic has already been done to death: “It’s slightly emotionally arid that something [a subject like this] should pass from fashion.” Given that view, I look forward to Mr. Stephens’ future plays on such pressing topics as Satanists breeding children for sacrifice, communists infiltrating the free world and witches attempting to bring about the downfall of Christendom by withering their neighbors’ crops with the Evil Eye.

One Year Ago Today

“Extra, Extra” discusses my attitude on reporting current events, examines the implications of Massachusetts’ “sex trafficking” law and criticizes the glacial pace of New York police’s investigation of the Long Island Killer.

55 Responses

Maggie – for most of the hysteria’s you’ve mentioned – there was no internet available for John Q. Public to “find” opposing views on.

Don’t you think that the existence of the internet will impact your “20-year timeline” for hysteria’s? Honestly – if not for your blog, and others – I probably would be a card-carrying member of the hysteria of trafficking since I’m normally extremely susceptible to tails of torture for the unfortunate – especially when they’re women or children.

I can’t really compare this hysteria to the satanic hysteria of the 80’s and early 90’s – honestly, when you are stationed on subs (and I was, continuously for a decade without a break) – then you miss one helluva lot of history because you’re underwater. It’s a strange experience – I still learn things today from that era that I was completely oblivious to as they were happening because I was submerged in some part of the world’s oceans.

I honestly don’t think the internet will shorten the hysteria for the simple reason that it’s also used by the hysterics to promote the mythology. Even during the height of the Satanic Panic a concerned person could have called the psychology or theology department of most universities, or even talked to a clergyman of a major denomination, and received a straight, skeptical answer…but they didn’t, and today they come to sites like this one (which present literally thousands of words of evidence) and deny it without reading any of the disproof. As I discuss in tomorrow’s column, myth cannot be disproved by facts, only by negative statements from other authority figures.

I don’t give this trafficking hysteria more than two years. Partly due to the internet – but also partly due to the fact that the European Union is about to implode. People everywhere (including the US) will have greater things to worry about than the “scare of the day” – and that includes not only trafficking – but a host of other “hyscarias” I can think of.

Oh, absolutely; a real crisis can totally short-circuit a moral panic. For example, the “white slavery” hysteria (the previous iteration of “sex trafficking”) was cut short by World War I in Europe years before it petered out in the US.

It was scary the way so many people suspended their critical faculties and believed what was being alleged during the “Satanic Panic”. I remember it was said (and believed) that a live sheep was ritually slaughtered in an apartment of a local housing block – after somehow being taken up several flights of stairs. In the north of Scotland children accused a priest of being a witch purely on the grounds that on cold days he wore a black cloak.

Many of the accusations could have come word for word from medieval witch trials.

Yes, that was what first caught my attention; both the accusations and the supposed “testimony” from children involved all this weird Jungian stuff which sounded exactly like the old witch-trial transcripts, and as in the “trafficking” mythology wholly unrelated crimes were forced into the myth-narrative. The newsman I mentioned in the text even claimed that a hole made in the wall of his garage by petty thieves (so as to get into his house, no doubt) had actually been made by Satanists coming to murder him in revenge for an expose he did on the news. This was broadcast ON THE AIR on the local CBS news affiliate, one of the oldest television stations in the country, and nobody publicly questioned his credibility except me and a local skeptic group given a two-minute interview on a rival station.

Oh, this had a direct, formative impact on my teenage years. I had gotten involved with Fantasy Role Playing games as a child in the 70’s By the 80’s Fantasy Role Playing games were considered to be Satanic:

This led to a minor whispering campaign against me in Junior High and High School. By some of the teachers as well as the students, no less. Probably a good thing, as it led to a permanent insane hatred of and skepticism about Evangelical Christianity on my part. (I grew up in a Catholic family, so they didn’t believe in any of this. I remember my Dad mentioning I played D&D in a computer BBS, this was pre-Internet, and someone asking him, “but did you see that episode of 60 Minutes” where they had exposed the “Satanic” nature of my childish hobby.) Later I permanently broke with the Catholic Church when they joined forces with the Reverend Doctor Wildmon in an insane attempt to suppress the TV show NYPD Blue, because I had remembered his ilk from my miserable Middle School years:

…and that was a good thing because it got me out of a repressive organization that had had a hold on my family for generations. (I had a great aunt who was a nun, for example… I’m still very fond of her and miss her. I myself had been an altar boy for years and years.)

The sad thing is that playing D&D is not nearly as glamorous as being in a Satanic cult. I imagine that if I was in a Satanic cult I would have been to a few orgies, for example, rather than doing math problems involving rolling dice and drawing maps on graph paper. (Nowadays is seems that D&D has lost its Satanic reputation, they had a recent episode of the sitcom Community about it, for example.)

As a digression, it seems like when I was a child the terrifying power of the female nipple was not yet known. In the original D&D books drawings of naked girls (Well, with bat wings, but still naked girls) would show up now and then, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the main impetus for the Satanic reputation of the game. The same as in my Greek Mythology coloring book, which I had as a small child. The sirens were my favorites in that one. Nothing compared to my Dad’s poorly hidden girly magazine library, of course. (Which was behind the furnace in the basement. My favorites were the Penthouses but my Dad preferred Playboy.)

I remember one doofus at UNO who proclaimed, “I hate gaming with women; they always want to talk to everything!” Luckily, my first group was just the opposite and actively recruited girls. My 7th campaign was actually all-female (DM and all 3 players) by design.

Yes, I eventually switched to fantasy themed board games in order to attract more diversity among players. D&D groups, I found, were horribly cliquish. D&D I had to “play” with the local gang of loudmouth malcontents (if you call a couple of hours of mouthing off occaisionally breaking for munchkining playing), while on the other hand the TSR boardgame “Dungeon!” I could play with my younger sister.

I still loved to collect the books though, although I was eventually happy to switch to collecting board games.

I brought up the sex trafficking myth with my friends in a conversation we were having.
It was awesome! I think they learned something but, at the same it was the most hilarious conversation ever.
I’m a young male, they’re young males, none of us have a lot of real experience in life, and I’m talking about sex work for almost twenty minutes.

Also, I’ve been reading up on reason.com and I have to admit that libertarian arguments to make much more sense when made by experienced intellectuals. Of course, I still find libertarianism to be kinda naive.

Like any political philosophy – there are different levels to libertarianism. However, libertarians tend to be judged along the lines of it’s greatest ideologues.

If you judged capitalism in that manner – it would look pretty harsh. When you judge socialism in that manner – it’s looks pretty detached from reality. Those systems are rarely viewed according to their “pure” versions though – except when socialists are trying to smear capitalists or vice versa. The truth, in fact is – that most of the capitalist and socialist nations have used “blended” solutions to address their economies and governments.

I think that is eventually how libertarianism will end up working. Don’t get hung up on the fact that some libertarians advocate almost no government at all. The fact that (most) DO subscribe to a government means they believe in a lot of the things government does. I tend to think a Conservative who divorces himself from the need to meddle in other people’s business can actually become a libertarian quite easily.

It’s not that easy for a committed socialist or marxist to do that, however – since those philosophies depend on large governments – which are not compatible with libertarian thinking.

That’s my view of it. I consider myself a libertarian – even though I’m Pro-Life because I think life is the first liberty. Other than that – I think government shouldn’t enforce any morality on anyone. I perfectly believe what Rand Paul was saying about “voluntary associations” and the civil rights act going too far. However, I don’t really share his Dad’s world view – which is naive in my opinion.

As I see it, the policing problem is part of the “power over” problem. Whenever you have a small group of people with great power over the majority, there’s problems. The few use the cops to keep the rest of us in line.

The libratarian answer seems to be to abolish much government, the socialist answer to make the people the government. Which would work? These days, neither will be tried to see.

Actually, you could do both at once if the socialists would be willing to give up concepts like wealth redistribution and centralized planning. They’re not all that incompatible otherwise, and voluntary associations of people are very big in libertarianism.

Both equitable wealth redistribution and no wealth redistribution are reasons socialists and libertarians are seen as naive. At this point in history the first would leave us all equally poor, which no good for making the pie bigger, and the second is heartless unless you inject “people will naturally give to the poor” utopianism or magical “the Market will fix everything!” to mitigate that.

What reality (not libertarian OR socialist utopias) and basic decency (not philosophical purity) demands is that there be some wealth redistribution, but not so much that the capability of the rich and could-become-rich to grow the pie for all of us is stifled.

And exactly how much would that be? Well that’s what we argue about, except of course when it’s all-or-nothing, socialist purity vs. libertarian purity.

As a socialist, I don’t insist on centralized planning. Or anything else much. What I seek to avoid is “power over”. I would redistribute wealth by making all large enterprises employee or co-op owned. Mine is a very non-centralized socialism.

For me the rude awakening was the similarly themed devil worshipping hysteria over RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons, mostly in the 80’s and early 90’s, though mercifully, the hysteria wasn’t anywhere near as harmful as in other moral panics.

At that young age I couldn’t wrap my head around how apparently respectable people were spouting the most misinformed fantastical nonsense about it, and being taken seriously by (some) cops! Some of the patterns are similar to the “who is an expert” in whoredom debate, former insiders passing off nonsense as “experts” denouncing the entire genre based on unconfirmed accounts, outsiders who didn’t know shit but talk like they do, while any insiders not singing with the damnation choir are rejected or ignored. The religious fanatics dislike of RPGs, I get. (Side Note: To their shame the daddy of RPGs, TSR, pandered to the religious lobby by altering some of their product releases). But everybody else?

Decades later, and neither I, nor any of the many other gamers I’ve met over the years have ever encountered anything like what D&D was accused of. The other moral panic was a few cases of mentally unstable individuals coming to a bad end on which D&D was blamed for all their problems (along with sex, drugs, rock and roll etc). Only one rare case I was aware of (a relatively famous one) actually directly involved a mentally ill individual playing an RPG and that combination resulting in tragedy, someone who people around him were warned that such games were dangerous for that individual.

It’s was the ultimate irony that a bunch of people accused of being disconnected from reality (gamers) had a better grasp of it than their accusers.

So many of the things people see as problems, sex, drugs, rock and roll and fantasy games have been big sources of pleasure in my life. Makes me wonder if the pleasure isn’t the real issue these people have…

Given that view, I look forward to Mr. Stephens’ future plays on such pressing topics as Satanists breeding children for sacrifice, communists infiltrating the free world and witches attempting to bring about the downfall of Christendom by withering their neighbors’ crops with the Evil Eye.

You missed the one where Jews kidnap Christian children and use their blood to make matzo for Passover…

Just as a moral panic does not necessarily prove the existence of some particular social injustice or criminal behaviour, it’s just as true that exposing certain allegations and rumours to be little more than unfounded hysteria (often fuelled by the media) does not necessarily mean society is free of the problem.

That may sound pedantic but the tactic of deliberately creating a false trail which is designed to attract everyone’s attention and eventually lead them to a dead end is a pretty common tactic used by everyone from small time crooks to cheating partners to the political elite. It’s just a variation of ‘crying wolf’.

The TV watching public only have been convinced once that a particular moral panic or ‘conspiracy theory’ has already been exposed as unfounded paranoid nonsense, and all subsequent (and perhaps *genuine*) evidence will tend to get disregarded by reflex action.

“Oh, you’re not still going on about X are you? Don’t you know that was already debunked years ago”.

It’s a lot easier to create false trails and general background noise (disinfo) than it is to conceal the truth when it is lying out in the open on its own. I often wonder if certain media hysterias about certain subjects aren’t in fact noisy, chaotic Mardi Gras street carnivals into which the real crooks can operate without being noticed (symbolically speaking).

This could well be the case for satanic cults and satanic ritual abuse. I think there’s enough evidence to indicate the existence of underground (and not so underground) networks all over the world getting up to all sorts of evil.

And when I say ‘evil’ I mean stuff which is no more (or no less) evil than what we already know is going on in the world, as reported on the nightly news. AFAIC wars, economic policies which create poverty and starvation, torture in the name of the WoT, torture in the name of the dark spirits, satanic ritual abuse….. these are all equally evil examples of rape, murder and exploitation. I mean, how does one differentiate?! The only difference is that the perpetrators wear different costumes, that’s all. A million slaughtered in Iraq hardly even registers with most people, but a child kept in a cellar and abused for a few years would make headline news all over the world. The ruling class sure do love to define for us what is and isn’t evil…. lest we start coming up with our own definitions.

So thanks to decades of media propaganda, if you talk to the man on the street about ‘satanism’ they will probably just think of heavy metal album covers, Ozzy Osborne and Marilyn Manson and that’s about it.

It would seem that for the man on the street (or the girl in the shopping mall) the concept of ‘satanic cults’ has been skilfully redefined for us to mean little more than a form of fashion (consumerism). The same is true of other powerful and dangerous concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘self expression’, ‘individuality’ and so on …… these have all been carefully defined for us to mean little more than mere ‘fashion statements’ these days.

I do think it’s entirely possible the hysteria of the 80’s and the more recent ‘fashionable sexualisation of satanic themes and sexual abuse’ has been created deliberately and used as a smoke screen – a kind of Mardi Gras street carnival of hearsay, frivolity and unfounded and outrageous claims (disinfo)….. allowing the real perps to operate quietly and unnoticed among all the noise and the chaos. Without that background noise of (literally) non-sense any leaked information (such as a victim coming forward and telling of her/ his experiences) would stand out a mile.

I also think ‘satanic ritual abuse’ exists not in total isolation but as part of a sliding scale. And it is something which permeates the ‘establishment’ levels far more than the rest of society.

I wonder what people’s thoughts are regarding some of the following cases. They all involve ‘satanic ritual abuse’ as well as many other inter related subjects such as ‘dissociative identity disorder’ and ‘trauma based mind control’ as well.

Also check out ‘Conspiracy Of Silence’ on youtube, a documentary which made it to the TV listings but was pulled at the last minute.

I believe all my links are ‘quality’ (relative to a lot of crap out there on the web) but of course ‘skepticism and critical thinking must be applied at all times’ (like duh!)……. but even where a carnival of hype/ disinfo does exist, I still think we should always ask “why?”

When the claims of the moral panic start getting so ridiculous that people start to question it, we will hear that of course the story is getting ridiculous; the conspirators know that we’re on to them! So of course the conspirators put out stories so absurd that they are rejected, in the hope that “the sheeple” will reject the entire moral panic as silly. You see, that’s what they want you to think!!!

Of course the aliens aren’t implanting hybrid fetuses in Earth women. The government spread that story so we wouldn’t know what they’re really doing with all those aliens.

Of course there aren’t “sacrificial baby breeding farms” all around the world. The Satanists spread that story so that we’d all laugh and not look into what the Satanists are really doing.

And did it turn out that Alex Jones is a bit of a flake? Well of course he is: the New World Order planted him so that those who were onto the NWO would be mislead, and the rest of us would laugh and ignore what the Council and Panel on Something Vaguely Spooky are really doing.

With respect (and with thanks, I guess), your reply kind of illustrates a lot of what I was talking about in my original comment.

“.. Wow. I was expecting this, but not so soon…”

This is not just a mild ad hominem attack. In that single introductory sentence you manage the feat of expressing shock while simultaneously suggesting my views are also very predictable to you (a good way to subtly imply you’re some sort of learned authority in this area and that I am not).

Your ‘shock and yawn’ response paints me as the ‘crazy outsider’ coming in with a bunch of wacky ideas, while putting me in the category of: ‘this topic already been debunked – no need to examine new evidence – NEXT!’

At no point in your ‘response’ do you refer to, let alone discuss or question the validity of a single thing I actually said (or the examples I provided).

Amazing.

Instead, you devote several more paragraphs to a parody of some exaggerated, fanatical world view, which you pass off as if it were *my* world view to other readers, presumably in the hope that they will become confused about your parody of me and what I actually wrote.

You use the cheap trick of adding on notions of ‘extremism’ or ‘universality’ to what I was talking about, making it seem as if in my world view *all* examples of X must be the proof of Y. Or *everyone* associated with observation A must be involved in agenda B. And so on.

I was very clear not to suggest anything of the sort. I was just pointing out some fairly common tactics which any one of us might use from time to time. (Note: not everyone, not all the time).

The idea that people in the world have the capacity to behave in deceptive, manipulative and moderately sophisticated ways to ‘lead others up the garden path’ is not the product of some crazy and paranoid world view, as you seem to be suggesting, it is just a fact of life.

A husband cheating on his wife for five years is probably going to spin quite a complex and sophisticated deception and conspiracy. And it will seem almost unfathomably sophisticated if you try to imagine it in your brain as a single overarching ‘plan’ all at once. Of course, in reality such deceptions/ conspiracies are a progression of small actions occurring over a long period with plenty of time in between to plan the next move. The same is true in every other realm of human interaction, including the political/ establishment/ organised crime realms.

To deceive and conspire against a whole nation (or the world) does not necessarily require any more wit or cunning than having an extra marital affair – it just requires a lot more money. To fail to see this is to make the common mistake of linking ‘effect’ to ‘motive’ and ‘morality’, rather than more practically to ‘means’.

The billionaire property tycoon may not ever need to break out into a sweat or even get his hands dirty while building his enormous skyscraper…. unlike the average wage earning family who are attempting to build their own modest two bedroom house. Money tends to make all plans a lot easier to accomplish.

Government and corporations (or both working as a unit) have effectively limitless resources, meaning anything is possible for them – and so no ‘wacky conspiracies’ (as we are taught to think of them) are really even required wherever they are concerned.

(It’s almost disappointing, I know).

And so in your attempts to ridicule me, all you’re really doing is implying that those with power and money (and often a proven track record of immoral and criminal behaviour) would not (or perhaps could not) use the same dirty tricks the rest of society is prone to using, despite the fact that they have near infinite resources at their disposal. Therefore YOU are the one singling out the ‘ruling classes’ as being somehow special and unique, not me, for implying they are somehow ‘above immorality’.

Of course this does not prove they are all raping children. I am aware of that. But your argument is not about the evidence I provided – after all, you do not refer to any of it. Your ‘argument’ (in the form of ridicule) is just about what a crazy idea it is that people with near ‘infinite’ power and money could cover up big, vile crimes and be able to throw the public off the scent with any degree of skill and sophistication.

1. It’s actually not that difficult at all.
2. Evil people tend to be quite cunning.
3. When the majority of the public has your attitude it becomes incredibly easy.

Having failed to address (or even acknowledge) a single thing I wrote, your last paragraph brings up Alex Jones (say what?). You then start attacking *his* character as well (“He turned me into a newt”), also without referring to any information he’s ever presented either.

(“I got better..”)

Sure it’s possible Alex Jones (or anyone else in the world) might be a plant. Everyone knows about cointelpro, tactical psyops teams working in the news media blah blah blah …… or he may be a flawed human being, or he may self censor (don’t we all?), or he may not be the most perfect, impartial journalist who ever existed. Or he may be all of the above.

But the *whole point* of the information revolution is that we don’t NEED to rely on any particular journalist or sources to be our ‘news daddies’ anymore, whether it’s Jones’ infowars or the Rothschild owned AP/ Reuters. These days we can now cross check all information for *ourselves* from multiple and varied sources.

Your AJ example is kind of insulting to everyone’s intelligence and you just seem to be trying to trigger more of an irrational/ emotional reaction in the readers by associating Alex Jones (along with your ad hominem attack on *him*) with *my* comment?

It is fascinating though, that when someone speaks *against* the prevailing ‘mainstream’ world view they aren’t allowed to be ‘flakes’ or flawed in any other way – otherwise their information and views are instantly classed as invalid.

But when, say, a mainstream politician or mainstream media pundit is found to be taking bribes, suffering from a conflict of interest, having an affair, covering up crimes, lying his arse off, or just talking absolute provable BS no one ever suggests the mainstream world view – as represented by ‘democracy’ and ‘statism’ – is instantly invalid and worthy of equal ridicule and derision.

I’m all for being skeptical and critical of Alex Jones (et al) but let’s be consistent here!

But of course people are never consistent. No one ever says, “That ‘statism theorist’ guy was proven to be a lying, two faced shit who supported a war based on lies that’s killed a million people, so you’re an idiot if you still believe in statism theory.”

I don’t really go out of my way to follow Alex Jones but as far as I’m aware he’s never helped to spread hate speech, invaded a country, commit genocide, steal anyone’s earnings, cover up crimes – nor has he ever given support to people who do those kinds of things …… that puts him above most political people AND most voters who we could call ‘democracy theorists’ …… (the theory that your vote counts! Proven to be a lie over and over and over again, yet everyone still believes in it).

“…. the New World Order planted him so that those who were onto the NWO would be mislead, and the rest of us would laugh and ignore what the Council and Panel on Something Vaguely Spooky are really doing….”

For years people were ridiculed for talking about the NWO and then when the internet came along and people could leave links to a bunch of political people talking about it with their own mouths (like I just did) everyone was like, “Ohhhhh, you mean the *New* World Order…. oh sorry, we thought you were talking about something else entirely …… yeah, well the NWO is a goal of the elite, sure….. but it’s not a conspiracy … my word no! – whatever gave you that idea?! …..no, no, they just didn’t think you’d be that interested in their plans for a world government*… ”

(*yes that excuse really has been used in a mainstream publication, they really do think people are that stupid…… and they’re mostly right).

Now that the plan is too well advanced for it to remain completely hidden, they’re now starting to write articles in business magazines about their plans for a NWO (a nice ‘global village’, not global corporate fascism, honest!), and yet still, if one of us peasants dares to mention the NWO, it’s like the piano player stops, the whole bar falls silent and everyone turns around to stare at you with their jaw hanging open.

Apparently *they* can talk about their NWO openly but *we* can’t. Is this like the dark ages or something?…”Do not speak of the Order of the New World, for only the kings and priests may make mention of such matters”

(“Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down ‘ere!”)

Look, we all know that thanks primarily to new technologies everything in the world is tending to ‘going global’ at the moment, right? To assume the continuing centralisation of political and economic power is going to be the one and only *exception* to this trend is just fucking retarded. Sorry but it is. We are hurtling towards *a* NWO of some kind, whether we like it or not (I think it’s quite fun personally). Technology is making all sorts of new ways of organising society possible RIGHT NOW. Some new systems of organisation have the potential to be wonderful, some nightmarish, others unfathomably evil.

*The* NWO refers to a way of organising society on a global level with all those powerful new technologies currently being invented, but in the world which is *still* being controlled by small cabals of criminals in and around government. This can’t be allowed to happen. Like obviously! (do I really need to explain why?)

There are so many other alternatives if only we can break out of the mindset of hierarchy and centralised control and most importantly the initiation of FORCE (AKA laws, governments, tax etc) as the only way to organise society and ‘solve social problems’.

Sticking your head in the sand about the whole NWO thing is not really helping much. And nor is bringing the subject into the conversation as if it were a half baked conspiracy theory in attempt to make me seem like a ‘nutter’.

Is the term ‘vaguely spooky’ just part of your ongoing attempt to mock me in front of readers and confuse the issues I was actually taking about?

… (or perhaps you were referring to the world leaders and business tycoons (including many US presidents) attending, as they do every year, mock human sacrifice rituals (and much more besides, according to this book) on the shores of a lake in a redwood forest in northern CA underneath a 40 foot stone representation of Moloch, while still, er, professing to be apple pie eating, God-fearing, patriotic, baby holding Christians in front of the naive American voters etc etc. (see Bohemian Grove link above for details…). How much ‘spooky’ is enough when it comes to the people in control of your economy, life, schools, laws, nuclear arsenal etc?)

I’m sorry to make so much of your reply, but to me your reply just feels like you went and put chewing gum in my hair. It’s just really annoying to have to deal with, and I wonder why you bothered doing it in the first place.

Does it feel good? Did I offend you in some way? Are you making some point that I have missed? (if so do let me know)

Meanwhile this continues to be a very serious subject.

I dare you, no I double dare you, no I triple dare you to research the Hollie Grieg story which I linked, and not end up totally convinced that there are major pedo rings operating at the highest levels of government, law, police, education and the establishment in general in the UK. The cover up of ‘something’ (perhaps the absence of a crime?) is starting to get seriously desperate now. They recently imprisoned a man for a year (with no jury BTW) for attempting to to hand out leaflets to raise awareness about the case. I mean come on, let’s get real!

If you want to believe all stories of SRA are crazy hysteria from conspiracy loonies – fine! – but PLEASE don’t just ridicule these subjects without even bothering to investigate on a case by case basis.

There’s no such thing as SRA in reality, there’s just a bunch of people in the world, most of them damaged goods, some of them severely.

Children rely on us – who are also damaged goods – to protect them from the really, seriously fucked up damaged people.

Dismissing SRA by reflex action as a hysterical, deluded ‘genre’ is an awfully big gamble, and a totally pointless one too.

I seem to have hit a bigger nerve than I was aiming for. I’m not going to take everything one by one (it would be an even longer post), but a very few I will.

I can’t prove that I was expecting the time-tested “the nuttier parts of conspiracy theories are part of the conspiracy” dodge (how would anybody prove such a thing?), but I don’t have to be any “learned authority” to recognize something that’s happened so often. The fact that it’s happening I actually consider this good news: it’s a sign that the “child sex trafficking” panic is burning itself out.

I never suggested that you believed and/or promoted alien abductions, Satanic baby-breeding farms, or anything about Alex Jones. Those were simply examples of other time this dodge has come up that I’ve seen.

I’m aware of Bohemian Grove. It is a real place, and powerful politicians and businessmen really do go there. There really is a goofy ritual with a huge stone owl, or rather a fake huge stone owl. Bohemian Grove has been described as “Burning Man for rich old farts.” That’s pretty much my understanding of it. I am bothered by the hypocrisy of politicians who present themselves as Hyper-Christians taking part in something like this and then hiding it.

And yes, by “Council and Panel on Something Vaguely Spooky” was a reference to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council for National Policy, the Tri-Lateral Commission, and any I’ve left out. Maybe poking fun at it like that wasn’t my most mature moment ever, but you see, I’ve been hearing a lot of this for years, and I do find it silly.

If it makes you feel better, just assume I’m wrong about Alex Jones. The idea that he’s a “gatekeeper” is one that I’ve been exposed to in the last year.

The last time I accepted a triple dare (actually, I think it was a triple dog dare), I ended up looking terribly foolish, I was utterly embarrassed, and I got into trouble. I don’t think I care to do that again.

“….I’m aware of Bohemian Grove. It is a real place, and powerful politicians and businessmen really do go there. There really is a goofy ritual with a huge stone owl, or rather a fake huge stone owl. Bohemian Grove has been described as “Burning Man for rich old farts.” That’s pretty much my understanding of it….”

So just to summarise what we know about Bohemian Grove.

1. It’s, real. It happens every year.
2. The political, media, corporate, military, industrial ‘elite’ attend.
3. Private meetings of this kind between political people and big business must surely be illegal.
4. It was generally hushed up and often denied, until the internet forced it out into the open, yet still the media (whose owners attend) avoid reporting on it.
5. It involves elaborate rituals such as the ‘‘cremation of care’ ritual complete with mock child sacrifice.
6. Witnesses (alleged sex slaves) such as Cathy O’Brien (see previous links) have submitted evidence of vomit inducing sexual and violent crimes against women and children during the ‘sumer camp’ for pleasure, ritual, initiation and also for blackmail purposes.
7. Such evidence is blocked from going to court and being properly tested examined and tested due to the National Security Act.
8. You view of this ‘summer camp’ seems to be heavily influenced by someone unspecified describing it as a “Burning Man for rich old farts.”
9. What is known without a doubt is that our political/ corporate elite have no qualms about slaughtering millions of men, women, children and babies for profit and empire. Any further crimes of rape and or murder – if they were to be exposed – would not be revealing some shocking new side of their psychological make up. It would come as little surprise.
10. Allegations of child abuse cases or rings seem to follow these elite everywhere, and a case is currently breaking in the UK as we speak so massive and so serious it could potentially bring down half the British establishment.
11. Just to be clear (because the media does tend to desensitise us to these things) many of the men attending these ritual meetings are already responsible for the murder of *millions* of innocent human beings. Some of the Bohemian Grove attendees are already convicted war criminals.

In light of these points alone, all of which I laid out in my other comments, I am baffled by your comment,

“There really is a goofy ritual with a huge stone owl”

Question: isn’t that exactly the same type of reckless, outrageous, unfounded, random, illogical, irresponsible and misleading claim that you ridicule others for making with regards to this whole subject?

To treat this subject as if there’s nothing going on, it’s all worthy of wisecracks and mockery and that it’s not really worth discussing seriously is no different to the stance that every town has a secret satanic baby farming operation in it and ritual slaughter happens every full moon all across the land.

It’s the same basic mindset, just attaching itself to the polar opposite stance, that’s all.

As such your attitude creates just as much of a hindrance to achieving any kind of sober and evidence based grip on these difficult subjects as the people you mock.

One of the worst effects of ‘committed conspiracy theorists’ is that it tends to rally people into the opposite camp to become ‘committed coincidence theorists’…. can’t we just look at reason and evidence with an open and sober mind?

2. The political, media, corporate, military, industrial ‘elite’ attend, just as they and millions of others attend various things every year. I myself attend, every year, an event which include people in strange costumes, bad (and sometimes surprisingly good, but not from me) singing, expressions of unorthodox philosophies, swords, and dancing.

3. Private meetings of this kind between political people and big business may or may not be illegal. Political people and lobbyists are always meeting, and they seldom go to jail.

4. It was generally hushed up and often denied, until the internet forced it out into the open, yet still the media (some of whose owners attend) avoid reporting on it.

5. It involves elaborate rituals such as the ‘‘cremation of care’ ritual complete with mock sacrifice of a human effigy, which some claim represents a child.

6. It is claimed that all sorts of weird, occultic, perverted sexual stuff goes on, including sexual slavery. Whether this is true or not we don’t know, in part because the people who attend are so secretive. It’s a big claim, and needs more to support it than the fact that it has been claimed.

7. Such evidence is blocked from going to court and being properly tested examined and tested due to the National Security Act. I don’t know about this, but considering everything the NSA has been used to justify, I guess I can’t just dismiss it. Conspiracy theories would gain a lot less traction if people in power didn’t oftentimes act so, well, conspiratorial.

8. A commenter on YouTube referred to Bohemian Grove as “Burning Man for rich old farts,” and I found that this phrase expressed my own feelings better than anything I could come up with. I’ve often found that Neil Diamond or Paul McCartney can express my romantic feelings better than I can, too.

9. What is known without a doubt is that some of our political/ corporate elite have no qualms about slaughtering millions of men, women, children and babies for profit and empire. While many of them seem to be the type who would no scruple to do it on the West Coast, any specific accusations need to be backed up with more than “at least some of them are the sort of person who would do that.”

10. Allegations of child abuse cases or rings seem to follow prominent people everywhere, and are often made by those who dislike the person’s politics, position, religion, business practices, or wealth. Prominent people are always accused of horrible things simply because they are prominent. Sometimes, a prominent person is actually guilty.

11. Just to be clear, you’re repeating point 9.

I find Bohemian Grove disturbing, and the fact that holier-than-thou, I’m-so-Christian politicians attend it and then try to hush it up disgusting. If there is nothing else going on: no rapes, no sex slavery, no child anything, that and that alone is bad enough. If anybody can bring forth credible evidence of the other things (credible evidence, not just saying it or pointing out that bad people aren’t above such things), then I’m all for a full investigation, and the punishing of any guilty parties to the fullest extent the law allows.

“….There really is a goofy ritual with a huge stone owl, or rather a fake huge stone owl. Bohemian Grove has been described as “Burning Man for rich old farts…..”

And finally after more ‘tussling’ we ended up at the much more sober and non hysterical:

“…..I find Bohemian Grove disturbing, and the fact that holier-than-thou, I’m-so-Christian politicians attend it and then try to hush it up disgusting. If there is nothing else going on: no rapes, no sex slavery, no child anything, that and that alone is bad enough. If anybody can bring forth credible evidence of the other things (credible evidence, not just saying it or pointing out that bad people aren’t above such things), then I’m all for a full investigation, and the punishing of any guilty parties to the fullest extent the law allows….”

My question is: why did it take so long to get to version three?

If you’re capable of talking about the subject with reason and clarity (which you obviously are – we seem to share the same basic view of BG) why bother with all those throwaway put downs and jibes to begin with?

Surely they just makes it harder for everyone else to figure out whether to take any of this stuff seriously or not – especially if they are completely new to these subjects?

It cuts both ways. Fanatical ‘anti-hysteria’ (it’s all just a ‘goofy ritual’ nothing to worry about) is just as much an obstacle to getting to the truth or to rational thought as fanatical hysteria (all politicians eat babies for breakfast). They are the same thing aren’t they? Equal and opposite types of the same kind of fanaticism…… which was kind of my point to begin with.

“…Council and Panel on Something Vaguely Spooky…” didn’t have anything to do with Bohemian Grove.

I do believe that the whole BG thing is goofy, and that the description “Burning Man for rich old farts” is a better description than anything I could ever come up with. At the same time, if there is credible evidence that it’s more than that, then of course the rich and well-connected should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us. The key word here is IF.

Let me put it this way: I just got back yesterday from Project: A-KON. I had a great time, even though I ate too-young yogurt and by guts are still letting me know about it. I go every year, have for twelve years, and will for as long as they keep doing it and I am still alive. Does this make me a bad guy, or somebody who shouldn’t be in a position of power? No, of course not. Unless…

Even without that, it should disqualify me IF I have been promoting myself as a Japan-basher, a youth-culture-basher, a cosplay-basher, an animation-basher. “Vote for me because I want to censor animation, ban the wearing of costumes, I think all the young folks are going to Hell, and I hate everything about or from Japan. Vote for me! Vote for me!” And I go to A-KON every year. No matter how good a job that fairy did, I should be laughed out of the election over that.

“…..“…Council and Panel on Something Vaguely Spooky…” didn’t have anything to do with Bohemian Grove…”

I know, but you were referring to the ‘ruling elites’ and the kinds of clubs, think tanks, secret societies, fraternities and other groups they belong to. To be fair, it didn’t have anything to do with anything because you were deliberately being vague and facetious.

“… if there is credible evidence that it’s more than that, then of course the rich and well-connected should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us. ….”

I see. Remind me again, what is a ‘law’ and who makes them and enforces them? Because as far as I can tell, a ‘law’ is merely the opinion of the ‘government’ which is imposed on society and enforced also by ‘government’ using their court system, police, army etc …… except that often these ‘laws’ are not enforced at all. It really depends on whether the government decides it wants to enforce them or not.

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of people totally NOT connected to the ruling establishment held mock child sacrifice rituals on some ordinary dude’s private estate every year. I mean, let’s imagine there were rumours flying about concerning sex slaves, murder and a whole bunch of other illegal and immoral behaviour at these events. Then imagine a woman compiles literally an entire book’s worth of documented evidence and allegations against these people and accuses them of kidnapping her and forcing her to participate in their violent, abusive and murderous festival of debauchery. She submits this book as evidence to the police and accuses these people of some extremely sick crimes.

You might expect the media to be all over it, causing huge public interest and the demand for an investigation. You might expect the police to carry out a full investigation and the accusations to be put through a court of law.

But as we know, in the case of Bohemian Grove the media rarely report on it, and never on the allegations made against it, the police never investigate any of these allegations – in fact the serious allegations are totally dismissed.

I would suggest the key difference here is the fact that BG is the playground of the ruling establishment and not some ordinary dudes and as such they are automatically ‘above the law’ because these people invented law in the first place. Law is not ‘morality’ or ‘justice’ – law is ‘the opinions of the government at any moment in time, backed by violence’.

It should be obvious that we cannot count on ‘law’ (or the media or the police) to uncover crimes committed by the ruling establishment so I don’t understand why you would suggest such a thing. In fact we can pretty much guarantee that those in power will always try to use law to *prevent* any establishment crimes from ever being exposed and brought to justice.

In the UK recently, a sixty six year old man exposing the unlawful cover up of incredibly serious allegations regarding a child abuse ring operating throughout the UK ‘establishment’ was arrested for attempting to hand out leaflets and subsequently banned from entering the constituency where he was standing in the election (in effect he was banned from standing in the election). He was later imprisoned for a year for this ‘breach of the peace’ (ie attempting to hand out leaflets) by a judge with a proven connection to those being accused by the victim and with no jury present in court.

The ‘elite’ do not just evade the law, they use the law as a weapon. The law is, after all, an opinion backed by violence. The law is a weapon. They own and operate this weapon. They do not just ‘evade’ the law, they own and operate the law. Do you see?

Therefore the only thing which can stand up to the law is public opinion and public pressure. This is NOT the same as hysteria or unfounded claims or prejudice or inverted snobbery. But the line between pressure to uncover the truth (‘zero tolerance for the lie’) and unfounded and hysterical allegations is an easy line to cross – especially for the ‘masses’ who can easily be whipped up into irrational hysteria, and in the process steered away from having any kind of useful positive effect. This was the original point I was making (all those years ago now!)

It is therefore vital that those of us with reasonable intelligence and a relatively firm grip on reality (a rare breed thanks to the terrible effects of government education and the media) are always as clear, sober and precise as possible when discussing any of these subjects in public – to the point where no remark can be misconstrued or deliberately twisted.

If we wait for the ‘law’ to uncover any potential crimes and bring these people to justice we will be waiting forever.

We will be waiting even longer if we take the media’s lead and continually dismiss these rulers and big cheeses (often proven mass murderers, let’s not forget) as being ‘colourful characters’ up to the same wacky stuff as the rest of us. Giving proven mass murderers and their friends zero benefit of the doubt when it comes to serious allegations of other crimes (backed up by seemingly credible evidence) is NOT the same as simply making unfounded and hysterical allegations.

What I find astounding about your comments is that you seem to be applying a kind of *positive discrimination* to these people (‘anti hysteria’). IOW because we know they are ‘the mafia’ (and in some case proven mass murderers) we should not even entertain any other allegations of other crimes for fear of being influenced by what we already know about these people. To me this is no different to being hysterical, paranoid, slanderous, conspiracy lunatics. It’s just the opposite extreme.

The analogy I would use is installing spotlights around a warehouse to light up doors and windows which would otherwise be hidden in darkness at night. Let’s say this warehouse is situated on the wrong side of the tracks. Shining a light on these areas night after night is NOT the same as specifically accusing the local community of being thieves. And a security guard walking around shining his flashlight into dark corners and dark alleyways is also not an accusation of any crime, nor is it hysterical or paranoid behaviour.

Public attention and public pressure (‘zero tolerance for the lie’) is no different in this respect. In a world where the few own and control the law and use it against the rest of us every day there simply can’t ever be too much public attention being focused on these people and on these kinds of allegations.

You used an awful lot of words to say, in effect, “those who are rich and well-connected tend to get away with more than the rest of us could.” Well, I know that, and so does everybody else here. I’m going to repeat the sentence that set you off, but this time I’m going to boldface one word:
“At the same time, if there is credible evidence that it’s more than that, then of course the rich and well-connected should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us.”

Now you spend a lot of words saying that they won’t be, but do you care to argue that they shouldn’t be?

But you know, you end up saying a bit more than that the rich and well-connected get away with more than the rest of us. What you are saying here is that the elites control everything. The don’t just get away with more, they are entirely above the law. They own the law. They control the government. They control the police. They control the military. They control industry. They control the media: news, entertainment, all of it. They control public opinion.

Which means that they’ve already won. We have lost. There is no hope, nothing to be done, no way to break the absolute stranglehold of the elite who already control everything.
No way to create big public exposes, because the news is in on it.
No way to have them arrested, because the cops are all in on it.
No way to try them, because the courts are in on it.
No way to regulate them, because the regulatory agencies are in on it.
No way to even create something as romantic as a popular uprising, because THEY control public opinion.
Nothing we can do at all, except to divide our time between feeling very special because we know what others do not, and occasionally wondering why THEY don’t squash us like the insignificant bugs we are.

This is the logical conclusion of your argument, not mine. I think that things are plenty bad, and they may well get worse before they get better. But I don’t believe that they are THAT bad. If I truly believed all of this, I sure wouldn’t be on line letting THEM know that I’ve ever even heard of Bohemian Grove, the Council on Foreign Relations, or any hotel that rhymes with “Milder Merg.” I would at the very least be trying to lie very low, hoping that THEY don’t notice me, and I might even consider fleeing the US or killing myself (since my life is in no way my own anyway).

I remember it primarily being feminists who pushed the satanic child abuse panic in Europe. The connection to the religious right was definitely downplayed, in fact it was the traditional “patriarchal” family unit that was often blamed for the abuse.

In the UK marxist feminist writer and activist Bea Campbell was one of the main popularisers of this myth. She campaigned about it for years, writing some of the earliest articles about ritual abuse in the mainstream press, and created a TV documentary to scaremonger about the epidemic of satanism supposedly sweeping the country. She had support from a variety of groups, including feminist social workers and domestic violence organisations. Campbell eventually dropped that moral panic, but never repudiated any of her claims.

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear that she’s since jumped on the sex trafficking bandwagon, as well as blaming strip clubs for rape and campaigning for them to be banned. Her history with the discredited satanic panic doesn’t seem to have damaged her credibility in feminist circles.

Swedish radical feminists seem to have taken it to even more extreme and paranoid depths than the fundamentalists in other countries. Their conspiracy theory had everything from Sweden’s hospitals to the UN controlled by baby sacrificing satanists, complete with lurid descriptions of rituals featuring things like exploding foetuses on meat hooks. The lack of evidence for any of this was explained by satanists conveniently having the power to wipe the memories of their victims.

Even with the backlash after the ritual abuse panic was exposed for what it was, feminist academics who pushed it in Sweden seem to have got away with lying about it.

“…You used an awful lot of words to say, in effect, “those who are rich and well-connected tend to get away with more than the rest of us could…”

That wasn’t really my point.

I was really talking about the tendency for people (including yourself, no offence) to bounce wildly between two ‘hysterical’ / ‘anti hysterical’ viewpoints. This is illustrated (again) in your last comment where you play these two extreme world views off against each other…..

1. All is lost, it’s all controlled, we are all helpless leaves at the mercy of the wind, there is no hope…etc
2. Things aren’t so bad. I haven’t been dragged off to a work camp just yet and there’s still food in the shops and entertainment on TV. I’ll just go with the flow and wait patiently and passively for world events to simply enfold around me.

The way I see it, both of these attitudes are equally extreme and fanatical. And each viewpoint tends to be justified by ridiculing the other for being extreme and fanatical. This is how we are programmed to remain ‘ridiculous and easy-to-control livestock full of nonsensical ideas’.

Baaaa! Baaaa! :)

“….What you are saying here is that the elites control everything….”

Only if you define ‘everything’ as being those things in society which the elite control.

If you look exclusively to politics, media, laws, government, the (monopolised) economy for the solutions and for social change then they have indeed already won, for they already control all of these things – maybe not 100%, but a hell of a lot more than we do.

The mistake is to believe these agencies are the only ways society can be organised…. or believing that society can’t in fact organise itself. You see, the elites really don’t care if you love government or hate government. They don’t care if you vote and cheer or riot and protest.

All they really care about is that you believe government is real.

In reality there is no government, there are only PEOPLE. And ‘society’ is just a bunch of people interacting and transacting with each other, based on their *beliefs* – their world view. If we all suddenly believed Maggie was a queen she would immediately become a queen! LOL! ;)

It would be *our belief* that she deserved to be treated as a royal and be given a palace, gifts, a throne, the right to rule over us etc that would make her a queen. In fact ONLY THROUGH OUR BELIEFS and subsequent behaviour can Maggie become a queen. She could never prove to us she was queen because ‘queen’ cannot be defined except through consensus belief of the people. She can *prove* she is a woman, or that she is grade 5 on the piano, or that she is a good cook (assuming she is of course) ….but she can never prove she is queen because that is totally arbitrary. Only *we* can make her queen through our consensus belief that she is indeed our queen.

Government is just the same – it only exists through consensus belief that it is real and through our resultant behaviour where we all act as though government and its laws are real. Government is essentially just another religion. It is mainly through government propaganda in government schools during our childhood that we are taught to pray to (vote for) a bunch of men in a big building to control our lives on the basis that they somehow know better than we do how we should live and how we should manage our wealth (hint: give half of it to them to spend).

In reality the government is no more (and no less) than a group of people in a big fancy building pretending to represent a mythical agency called ‘government’, just as priests are a group of people in a big fancy building pretending to represent a mythical being called ‘God’.

These men pretending to represent this agency called ‘government’ use our consensus belief in ‘government’ to grant themselves the monopolistic legal right to initiate force (or even violence and murder) against the public to achieve their objectives. If we didn’t believe they were ‘government’ we would all naturally call them criminals, thieves, murderers, mafia etc for stealing half our earnings and using the money to murder children in the middle east.

“……I’m going to repeat the sentence that set you off, but this time I’m going to boldface one word:
“At the same time, if there is credible evidence that it’s more than that, then of course the rich and well-connected should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us.”……”

It didn’t ‘set me off’, I just prefer to discuss the *real world* and not some mythical world which doesn’t exist where laws mean something completely different.

‘Laws’ are just the opinions currently held by this mythical agency ‘government’ which are then imposed onto the rest of society and enforced through the threat or initiation of violence (kidnapping, fines, imprisonment, tasering, shooting, beating with clubs etc).

It is ‘laws’ (such as the national security act) which have prevented credible evidence related to Bohemian Grove from ever reaching the ‘law courts’. In the UK more ‘laws’ have been used as an excuse to kidnap a man and put him in a cage for a year for trying to hand out leaflets about the Hollie Greig cover up in a public space. So you can’t say if evidence ever comes to light then laws should be applied because laws are clearly being used to prevent evidence from ever coming to light in the first place. This is like saying holy wars will always be justified until someone can prove that God does not exist.

Well God is not based on evidence to begin with is he – so it will never happen! ……and likewise, ‘laws’ have nothing to do with morality, ‘rights’, freedom or justice either. ‘Laws’ are NOT there to protect our property rights, or promote freedoms or justice. We are taught in government schools that government ‘laws’ ensure the following:

“We (the government) are here to make sure that no one steals or uses violence to get what they want, and if they ever do we will punish them by throwing them in a cage”

But in reality government laws ensure the following:

“We (the government) are here to make sure that only we are able to steal and use violence to get what we want, and if anyone else starts acting like we do we will punish them by throwing them in a cage”

Do you see the difference? ‘Laws’ simply ensure (through force/ violence) that the government maintains its monopoly on stealing from the population (taxes, government debt etc) and initiating violence against the population (‘laws’, police, wars, regulations etc).

The effect of ‘laws’ IN THE REAL WORLD is to prevent individuals or mafia organisations from competing with government in criminal activities.

‘Government’ is just an agency of violence and a criminal organisation by ALL definitions ……….. EXCEPT ‘law’. LOL

Without these ‘laws’ government is just a mafia (except a traditional mafia would be far more preferable to a government because mafias only want your money and in return they will leave you alone…… governments want to dictate how you live, they want your soul, your mind, your life, your children, your support, your loyalty…).

When you place an agency of violence at the heart of social organisation you end up with (a very sophisticated and expensive form of) tyranny. Always! The freedoms we do enjoy in society have nothing to do with government caring about us personally – it just makes us much less likely to rebel, thus much easier to control and much, much more PRODUCTIVE for the ruling elite.

Some of us fall for this system (this religion) totally and we happily wave our political flags and vote and cheer for our preferred slave masters. We have FAITH that the puppet slave masters we vote for will bring ‘change’. ‘Change you can BELIEVE IN’ = religious faith, a prayer to government. Only religions offer their services based on prayer/ faith …. everyone else uses contracts! LOL

Then there are other people who can see the corruption and the lies but still believe they can drive out the corruption in government and ‘change’ politics so that it finally serves the people, even though the system is specifically designed to shaft everyone, steal their money and rule everyone by force.

These people believe their faith in their ability to fundamentally change government for the better is somehow less naive than those other people who just have faith in government from the beginning!

You say that because I suggests the whole system is fundamentally criminal, violent and coercive, and it can NEVER be made to serve the people, that I am somehow ‘admitting defeat’. You imply that to abandon this religion called ‘government’ is to give up….. to lose faith in ‘government’ and the ‘system’ is to lose all hope for ‘change’.

I would argue the exact opposite :)

I would argue that to stop believing in this religion called ‘government’ is the first step to freedom and happiness and a peaceful voluntary and functional society. To lose all faith in ‘the system’ is to finally break free of the indoctrination, the mass mind control and to regain your own critical faculties. To remain in denial (paralysis) is just to prolong the suffering and make escape that bit harder and more dangerous.

No religion can continue to operate without consensus belief. Eventually as our belief in the religion of government subsides government will wither and fade away as it is revealed for what it is: just another criminal mafia / terrorist organisation ….and one with less and less support from the public.

The idea that “not paying government taxes is unlawful” will be eventually be replaced with “funding government terrorism is immoral”. And we will start to find new voluntary and peaceful ways to organise our society instead.

It all starts with getting real and losing our religion. If you think that means giving up or being demoralised then go right ahead and keep believing government and the whole damn system is real …. keep voting, or keep protesting or moaning or doing whatever you think might help the situation. Keep having faith.

I am happy to have lost my faith. It feels great. (Actually I don’t think I had much faith to begin with) :)

When I pay my taxes and obey silly laws I know that I am surrendering to terrorists who are using threats of violence against me which they call ‘laws’. I know they are then handing my money straight to the Rothschild banks to pay the interests on government loans taken out in my name and used to pay for (amongst other things) the slaughter of children and babies in Iraq.

I know government doesn’t exist. There are just people and their silly ideas and lots of indoctrinated police and soldiers getting paid to wave lots of guns about.

How many people losing all religious faith in government, and gaining clarity instead, do you think will it take before the whole immoral (and let’s face it, disastrous) system starts to crumble and fade away and good sense, peace and genuine prosperity prevail?

OK man, I give up. I forced my way through a little more than half of this, and then I just gave up. This isn’t just a case of TL’DR. I can read some long-ass posts. But you and I live in utterly different worlds, and I don’t understand your mindset and don’t find it interesting enough to make any further effort. I just don’t get it, and maybe that’s my failing, not yours.

“…I forced my way through a little more than half of this, and then I just gave up…”

Aww man… you missed the best bit! ;)

OK I admit it, that was a long-ass post. There’s just so much to say about this subject(s) I genuinely find it very difficult to express it in less (my failing, I’m sure).

I do believe freeing your mind from the government paradigm (the religion of statism) is literally to go to school all over again, only in reverse….. except that looking at the way the world is heading right now we simply don’t have 12+ years to figure this stuff out.

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Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say "pretty please with sugar on top" first, and then wait for me to say "okey-dokey".